Rewind to 2008. Downtown Oklahoma City was on the verge of a development boom that was set to include at least three new hotels and hundreds of new apartments and condominiums.

The development I was tracking back then was real. But then the national economic collapse hit, and anything not already under construction pretty much ground to a halt.

In the interim, the economics behind that interest continued to play out.

Upscale, $500,000 for-sale housing wasn't such a big hit, but the demand for more moderately priced housing, apartments and hotel rooms proved to outpace most expectations.

New properties such as the Bricktown Hampton Inn and Legacy at Arts Quarter apartments flipped at prices that netted their owners millions. Each new apartment property opened with every unit filled, and hotel occupancy continued to climb.

The freeze on financing for such projects has thawed, and the interest that existed previously — pent-up for five years — now is bursting forth with hotel and housing projects being announced at a pace of once every couple of weeks.

By my count, we're looking at 1,500 or more hotel rooms being added in and around downtown, and at least 1,000 more units of housing being built.

With the city hoping to build a 600-room conference hotel with a planned convention center, one can understand why not everyone at City Hall or the Convention and Visitors Bureau is applauding the rapid expansion of downtown's hotel market.

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Steve Lackmeyer is a reporter and columnist who started his career at The Oklahoman in 1990. Since then, he has won numerous awards for his coverage, which included the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, the city's Metropolitan...